{"id":1313,"date":"2009-02-15T23:02:50","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T23:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1313"},"modified":"2013-11-16T00:11:32","modified_gmt":"2013-11-16T00:11:32","slug":"back-to-rottingdean-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/back-to-rottingdean-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Rottingdean Beach…"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

After yesterday's success with the kestrels, I headed down to Rottingdean this afternoon. The light was poor, but the sun (such as it is) sits over the sea and reflects off the cliff faces so that even on 'bad' days you get workable conditions. Of course the fulmars were about, as raucous as ever.
<\/span> Fulmars<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

But they weren't the only bird that caught my eye. Among the guttural calls of the sea birds, there was a more delicate song. Tiny rock pipits were flitting along the cliff face, quite oblivious to the rest of the activity around them. <\/p>\n

<\/span> Rock pipit<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> Preening<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

Those were the main focus of the afternoon, but I do occasionally turn the camera to the sea and I had a couple of long distant surprises when I did. I tend to pick and choose whether I take shots of cormorants when I see them. I'm nearly always too far away and sometimes take a reference shot, but all too often don't bother. However, when I processed this one I was pleased I'd grabbed the shot. It's the nearest to a piebald cormorant that I've come across.
<\/span> Piebald cormorant<\/span><\/p>\n

And to cap it off, a little later I glanced out to sea and saw what I thought were four cormorants skimming the surface. I took another reference shot (seeing four together is unusual, at least in this location where they are more generally flying solo or in pairs). When I looked through the lens this is what I saw. Not cormorants at all!
<\/span> A small flock of brent geese!<\/span><\/p>\n

No sign of the fox tonight (yet), but the pond is livening up. I saw my first frog of the year, and a pair of adult newts. Spring is most certainly on its way.
\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: all shots taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,989],"tags":[449,508,498,516,246],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-cormorant","tag-fulmars","tag-geese","tag-rock-pipit","tag-rottingdean","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}